


What Does It Mean To Be A Hero?

by ShadowHaloedAngel



Series: Then and Now [6]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Nostalgia, Preconceptions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-18
Updated: 2014-08-18
Packaged: 2018-02-13 18:35:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2160825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowHaloedAngel/pseuds/ShadowHaloedAngel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Times change, and some things stay the same. Seventy years on from WW2, Steve Rogers finds that maybe some things in this world aren't as different as he thought they were, and maybe there's a place for him here after all.</p><p>Is a hero defined by sacrifice?</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Does It Mean To Be A Hero?

Even if he had slept through the seventy years in the ice, Steve Rogers had had plenty of time to think. Since he had woken he up he had actually done almost nothing but think. The world had changed so much it felt like he would never catch up, and he didn't like the idea of always being at sea.

People seemed to value different things now, and soldiers weren't necessarily on that list. Sure they were still at war - in fact, from what he could gather, they had almost perpetually been at war ever since he had disappeared. It wasn't entirely constant, but every decade had its fight, its losses and its heroes.

When he had first begun to read about them, Steve had found a special, bittersweet pleasure in looking through the newsreels which they still had around, seeing the faces of the young men who had volunteered to fight, or been drafted to serve their country and its cause. He had to admit that some of the causes had seemed more than a little spurious. Orders were orders, but Steve had never been one to simply accept them at face value. If he had been then, well... Bucky would never have made it as far into the war as he had, and Steve would never regret those extra few months with him, only that he had been unable to save him at the last. 

When he had first woken up, Steve had been certain, deep in his heart, that nobody in this modern age where life was cheap and everything was disposable could possibly understand what it was like to be a hero. Not like Bucky had, not like the rest of the commandoes had. They couldn't understand what it was like to come from nothing, to have to fight for and work for everything you had and then choose to make the sacrifice. It was easy to sacrifice something when you didn't know how it felt to have nothing.

He had still very much felt that way when he first met Tony Stark, and had said so pretty clearly.

Well, at the end of their first battle together as a team, Steve had been willing to eat those words a thousand times over.

He hadn't had much faith in any of them when Fury had briefed him about the Avengers Initiative. He hadn't dismissed Natasha because she was a woman, but she wasn't a soldier, she was a spy, and Steve wasn't convinced she was suited to field combat. Thor was a warrior from a different culture and another age, and the Captain wasn't convinced he could adjust. Clint was a great sniper, but that didn't mean he could fight. Stark was a billionaire too arrogant to follow any orders and who was likely to jeopardise any strategy, and Banner was an uncontrollable, directionless threat who could do as much damage to the team as to any opposition.

As he watched Iron Man's motionless form plummet from the sky, as Thor and Hulk both moved simultaneously to catch him, and Clint and Natasha stood silent, grey with exhaustion at his side, Steve knew he would be begging for forgiveness for those thoughts for many nights to come.

They had all gone so far above and beyond he could barely comprehend. Even the commandoes had needed more of an adjustment period before they had been able to work like such a well oiled machine as the Avengers had done, though being a smaller group probably helped. Steve knew they could not possibly have done without anyone, and the resentment he had felt pooled as cold guilt in the bottom of his stomach as Thor ripped off the suit's face mask and he wondered if it had all come at the cost of the greatest sacrifice. He hadn't expected that degree of selflessness from anyone, least of all Stark, and he wondered if he hadn't been reading them all wrong.

Standing there on the battlefield, littered with wrecked cars, concrete dust and Chitauri corpses, Steve Rogers had looked around at his team and reassessed his own personal definition of hero. Sure, there were plenty of things that had moved with the times, and there was a lot for a fellow to get used to, but just when you were prepared to believe the worst of everyone and judge them by the standards of a bygone age, they proved that they were more than capable of measuring up and not defined by the labels others had applied to them, or their pasts. 

People who were willing to lay everything on the line, for a cause, for a country, or simply in the defence of innocent people who would otherwise be lost, that was, and always would be, what it meant to be a hero.


End file.
